U S Efforts for Peace in
the Middle East:
Too Little, Too Late?
By
Michael S. Ladah
At one point after the Gulf War, and after
being battered by continuous disappointments brought about by the unqualified support of
the United States to the colonial policies of Israel, the Arab masses saw a glimmer of
hope in the Madrid Peace Conference. These
were the same masses that have been denouncing the United States as the guardian and
protector of the Palestinian repression perpetrated by Israel. They thought that the Madrid Peace Conference, and
subsequently the Oslo Accords were going to result in a clean, quick and permanent peace. They were obviously wrong.
The United States, its
Administration and its Congress are seen today as the cause for the continued plight of
the Palestinians. While the successive US
administrations have championed the cause of freedom and democracy in most of the world,
they have maintained an obvious double standard when it comes to the question of Palestine. The US has treated the Palestinians differently
from any group of oppressed people the world over. They
have treated the Palestinian’s rights with disregard and they have ignored the
suffering of a people under occupation and oppression by the Israeli military. Further, the US has obstructed the efforts of the
world community to resolve the conflict and have frustrated all proposals and resolutions
made by the United Nations Assembly and the UN Security Council. The US Administration has
done this because of the political pressures from the Zionist controlled media and the
pro-Israel special interest groups. Congress,
whose members are misguided about the politics of the Middle East, is biased in favor of
Israel because of the pro-Israel campaign contributions and because of the pressure of the
pro-Zionist Christian right. To support a
policy toward the Middle East which is in the interest of the US, when they conflict with
the interests of Israel, a member of Congress would risk being expelled from the club of
Israel supporters, and would run the risk of having
his or her political career ended abruptly. The
power of the pro-Israel supporters goes beyond evicting a member of either of the two
houses of Congress; it gets as potent as that power capable to evict a popular President
who takes on the pro-Israel lobby, George Bush, and who only few months before his
eviction had been hailed as one with the highest approval rating among the American
public.
The Israeli government’s
vacillations between war and peace are seen as the main reason why the Oslo Accords did
not succeed. Every issue that had at one point
been agreed to by one Israeli government has been overturned on the morning of the
formation of each of the successive governments. The
indecision by the Israeli government and the Israeli public about the future of Israel and
its definition as a state has caused a lot of mistrust among the Palestinians and the Arab
masses. Israel is seen as an entity that has
dispossessed the Palestinians from more than two thirds of their homeland in 1948, and
their actions since 1948 indicate that they have no intention to return the last third
which has been under the Israeli military occupation since 1967. The Israeli right, and world Zionism behind them,
are seen as a people intent on keeping Israel a Jewish state at the exclusion of all
others, including Palestinian Christians and Moslems.
The continued activities on expanding the settlements, the continuous
building of by-pass roads, and the military actions of withdrawal-then-reinvasion have all
pointed to one thing, that the Israelis have no plans to ever end their occupation. Rather, they intend to keep all of Palestine under
their control regardless of the UN resolutions, the US declarations or the peace
negotiations.
The Arab regimes are seen as the
cause for Israel’s intransigence and the US unqualified support to Israel. The so-called moderate Arab governments are seen as
regimes who have sold their souls to the US in exchange for their survival even when their
masses disagree with their policies and their treatment of their own citizens. These Arab regimes give the US Administration
their “coalition” support to do whatever the US decides to do in the region, or
in the Islamic world, in exchange for economic aid, in exchange for memberships in the
globalization clubs perceived as the “rich countries” clubs, such as the World
Trade Organization, and in exchange for promises to review the US policies toward the
Palestinians and the Israelis. But these
promises are quickly forgotten, and abruptly end as soon as the US completes its short
term objectives. The US gives false promises
and the Arab regimes deliver their governments’ full support and cooperation, all for
nothing substantial.
The US support for the most recent
UN resolution, which advocated two states in Palestine, is seen as too little and too
late. It is seen as another of those overtures
through which the US tries to court the Arab regime just to satisfy its immediate need to
conduct some “business” in the Arab world. It
is seen as a one night stand, not a courtship. It
is too little because the United States has the power and the might to set things right,
but stopped short of that. The agonizing part
for the Palestinians is that once again they will have to sit with the opposite side,
their oppressors who have been the Palestinians’ worst nightmare, and negotiate with
them. They have to negotiate for their human
rights of which they have been deprived by the Israeli military occupation. They have to negotiate for their civil rights of
which they have been deprived by the Israeli courts and the laws which tend to exclude
non-Jews and non-Israelis and tend to treat the Palestinians with bias by the Israeli
instruments of oppression. The Palestinians
have to sit and negotiate with the representatives of a population half of which has
advocated their transfer, expulsion, execution and/or assassination publicly and which has
called them snakes and two legged vermin.
The US sponsored resolution is too
little because it could, and should, have called for an end to the Israeli occupation and
dismantling of the settlements; how can there ever be a solution that does not incorporate
these two simple actions. We, the United
States of America, ordered Saddam Hussein to vacate Kuwait and Milosevic to vacate Kosovo. We enforced both vacate orders. So why can’t we order Israel to vacate the West
Bank and Gaza and enforce that order. The
resolution is too little because it does not give the Palestinians the right of return, a
right that is recognized by the UN Charter, and that is recognized by the USA in all cases
except when it comes to the Palestinian question. It
is too little because it does not recognize the plight of the Palestinians for the last
half century and does not call for their compensation for the suffering inflicted upon
them with the help of the United States.
The resolution is too late because
whatever latent gains the US Administration is hoping to get from sponsoring it will most
likely not materialize. The US actions toward
the Middle East have alienated and pushed away the Arab masses to a point which we all
hope is not beyond the point of no return. Most
of the “moderate” Arab regimes, which form the major share of the Middle East’s
coalition partners, continue to face the ever increasing risk of collapse at the hands of
their populations made extremists by their governments’ repression and their
governments’ desire to sell their soul to the United States. The US has to do a lot more to fix the damage they
caused to the Middle East. We, the American
public, can not claim that we are not part of the Arab Israeli conflict or that we are not
responsible for the oppression of the Palestinians. It
is our weapons, which we gave free of charge to Israel, that are being used to oppress the
Palestinians, and with our support. We have
been giving material and political support to those who have been oppressing the
Palestinians for generations now, so how can we claim that we are a third party to the
conflict, and try to disguise ourselves as an impartial peace broker.
It is about time for my country, the
land of the free and home of the brave, to side with what is right under the principles
outlined in our constitution and our declaration of independence, and apply our standards
fairly and universally. For those of us who
believe in the goodness of the American people, there may still be hope, but we have to
quickly stop being led over the edge of the cliff.
© 2002 by Michael S. Ladah. The writer is an Arab
American who lived and worked in various parts of the Middle East. He is the author
of “Quicksand, Oil and Dreams: The Story of One of Five Million Dispossessed
Palestinians.” He may be reached at
ladah@hotmail.com
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